Turkey’s Parliament Backs Military Measures on Syria

A man carried a girl past a house on Thursday where five Turkish civilians were killed in a mortar attack from Syria.Credit
Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Parliament on Thursday authorized further military action against Syria as Turkish forces fired a second round of artillery across the border, threatening to escalate a confrontation that has highlighted Turkey’s fraught double role as it tries to stay out of direct involvement in the fight against President Bashar al-Assad while offering haven and support to the rebels.

Turkey hit Syria after a mortar attack on Wednesday that killed five of its civilians. But the strike was also a reaction to growing public frustration with Turkey’s policy toward Syria — which has done little to push Mr. Assad out, while bringing hardship to Turks, who have lost trade and have been forced to take in about 100,000 refugees — and to the Turkish leadership’s sense of having been left alone by Western allies to manage an increasingly combustible situation, experts and commentators said.

“I don’t see what else the government could do,” said Soli Ozel, an academic and a columnist, who said he viewed Turkey’s response as one of restraint that made good on warnings that it would strike Syria if its border was threatened. “That is the least they could do. They have so tied themselves to massive retaliation rhetoric that they had to do something.”

The Turks fired into Syria after weeks in which towns in southeastern Turkey had been hit by stray bullets and shells coming from Syria. The parliamentary measure, which was ratified after several hours of a closed-door session in the capital, Ankara, permits cross-border raids, although senior officials insisted that Turkey, a member of NATO, did not want a war with its Arab neighbor.

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Turkish soldiers were on guard near Turkey’s border with Syria.Credit
Murad Sezer/Reuters

“Turkey does not want war with Syria,” Ibrahim Kalin, a senior aide to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wrote on Twitter. “But Turkey is capable of protecting its borders and will retaliate when necessary.” In a separate message, he said that “political, diplomatic initiatives will continue.”

In supporting the Syrian rebels by allowing weapons smuggling and the cross-border flow of fighters and refugees — and enduring the spillover effects of economic collapse in border areas and errant munitions — the government had little choice but to respond militarily, analysts said, even if the strike on Turkish territory was unintentional.

And ever since Syria downed a Turkish warplane in June, the government has been under domestic pressure to act.

“Many felt disappointed about the government’s lack of action when Syria shot down a Turkish warplane in June and got away with it,” said Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey.

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Credit
The New York Times

Given that fighting had been raging just across the border, some analysts said it was not surprising that munitions struck within Turkey — which sent more tanks and antiaircraft weapons to the border on Thursday — and questioned the aggressiveness of Turkey’s response.

“I think the Syrians truly overshot,” said Soner Cagaptay, the director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He added: “The question is why did Turkey respond the way it did. I think this is Ankara’s retaliation to the Syrians’ shooting down the Turkish plane in June.”

The episode may also have pointed to Turkey’s increasingly close relationship with the rebels. Though its military said it used radar to identify targets, rebels claimed on Thursday that they aided the Turkish military in its targeting for the artillery strikes.

An antigovernment fighter and activist in the area in Syria where the Turkish shells struck said he helped the Turks fire shells that killed 14 soldiers and destroyed several armored vehicles.

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The coffin of one of the civilians killed was carried in the border town of Akcakale.Credit
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The fighter, Ayham al-Khalaf, said in an interview by Skype that shortly after the Syrian shell hit Turkish territory, a Turkish officer contacted him. “He was speaking in a broken Arabic accent, asking my help getting the exact location of the artillery battery,” Mr. Khalaf said. “So I Googled the location, and I gave them exact details about the location and the distance.”

For weeks, Turkey’s leaders have faced a public backlash over their aggressive posture toward Syria, a sentiment owed partly to a feeling that Turkey may be on the right side in the fight but that it is isolated, without the backing of its Western allies, including the United States, as China, Russia and Iran have lined up forcefully behind the government of Mr. Assad. That feeling deepened after the latest crisis.

“We are now at a very critical juncture,” Melih Asik, a columnist, wrote in the centrist newspaper Milliyet. “We are not only facing Syria, but Iran, Iraq, Russia and China are behind it as well. Behind us, we have nothing but the provocative stance and empty promises of the U.S.”

Even if the decision to strike was partly motivated by flagging domestic support, the strike came against overwhelming opposition among the public for unilateral military action, according to a recent poll. The poll, conducted by the Strategic and Social Research Center, based in Ankara, found that 76 percent of Turks living in cities opposed unilateral military intervention, and that 56 percent believed that the government had mismanaged the Syria crisis. In addition, 66 percent said Turkey should not allow Syrian refugees into the country. The telephone survey was conducted last month in 27 urban areas.

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A customs office, damaged in fighting between rebels and Syrian forces, that is near a site where Turkish forces struck Thursday.Credit
Murad Sezer/Reuters

“I doubt that much will have changed after this incident,” said Mr. Ozel, the academic and columnist.

Some of the public opposition to a unilateral strike against Syria was reflected on the streets in Istanbul on Thursday evening, when a few thousand protesters marched down a central avenue, chanting antiwar slogans and railing against Mr. Erdogan and his governing party, the Justice and Development Party.

In a letter to the United Nations, Turkey called on the Security Council to “take the necessary measures against Syria’s offensive actions toward Turkey.”

On Thursday, despite initial resistance from Russia, the Security Council unanimously condemned “in the strongest terms” Syria’s shelling of the Turkish town. In its statement, the council said that “this incident highlighted the grave impact the crisis in Syria has on the security of its neighbors and on regional peace and stability.”

Russia and China both vetoed three previous Security Council resolutions addressing the Syria conflict and have urged Western powers to put more pressure on the antigovernment forces to stop fighting. Russian protection of the Assad government is one reason cited by analysts for Syria’s refusal to put into effect any kind of cease-fire.

NATO held an emergency meeting on Wednesday night and condemned the attack, but it did not suggest that it would invoke the clause in its charter that would require a collective response by NATO allies to the conflagration between Syria and Turkey.

Tim Arango reported from Istanbul, and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul; Hala Droubi, Hania Mourtada and Anne Barnard from Beirut; and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

A version of this article appears in print on October 5, 2012, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkey’s Parliament Backs Military Measures on Syria. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe